Briar Rose by: Jane Yolen
Summary:
"Then he came at last to a tower room. It had a tin celing and a tin floor covered with lattice work. In the middle of the room was a four-poster bed, fine damask curtains hanging from each corner. And on the bed lay the most beautiful woman the prince had ever seen," (Yolen 225). The book Briar Rose, by Jane Yolen, is an enchanting story of a young woman's, Becca Berlin, adventure to undercover her family's past. Becca was the youngest of three sisters and they lived in a house with their mother, father, and grandmother. Gemma, their grandmother, was a sweet old women who was a survivor of the Holocaust. Gemma never spoke about her past, instead she told Becca and her two older sisters variations of the story Briar Rose, Sleeping Beauty. Gemma would always place her self in the story as the sleeping princess. Becca loved and understood the story more than both of her sisters. Gemma dies when Becca is twenty three. Gemma's last words to Becca were,"I was the princess in the castle in the sleeping woods. And there came a great dark mist and we all fell asleep. But the prince kissed me awake. Only me. I was the princess! That castle is yours. It is all i have to leave you. You must find it. The castle in the sleeping woods. Promise me. Promise me you will find the castle. Promise me you will find the prince. Pomise me you will find the maker of the spells. I am Briar Rose. I am Briar Rose," (Yolen 16-17). Becca had made this promise and intended on keeping it. The rest of her family thought that she was out of her mind and that Gemma was old and just made up stories. But Becca loved her grandmother and was going to uncover the secrets behind her story of Briar Rose. So she did a lot of research on her Grandmother's past and she finally traced that her grandmother was a survivor of the extermination camp of Kulmof in Poland. Many people told her that that couldn't be possible because no woman had ever escaped Kulmof. She didn't believe any of them and she flew to Poland to visit the remains of the camp. There she met a man who knew her Grandmother. He told her his survival story and her grandmother was a big part of it. She discovered the secrets behind her grandmothers story of Briar Rose. There was a castle and there was a prince, just not the kind of castle she had expected and not the kind of prince she had expected to find either.
A poem of the fairy tale Briar Rose
One outstanding Book.........
Imagine being forced into a van with many other people. You are being yelled at by vicious people with guns. They tell you to listen or you will be shot. Everyone around you is crying and you suddenly begin to feel soft velvety tears roll down you cheek. What is going to happen to you? Where are you being taken? Who would do this to all of these innocent people? Thousands of questions flash through your mind. The air in the van smells funny and you can't tell what it smells like. The van stops. You and everyone else are shoved out of the van. You are naked and ashamed. The people with the guns force you to walk to a field around an abandoned castle. People are dropping all around you. Falling to a harsh and painful death. You try to keep walking and build up enough strength to try to run away, but your body is too weak. You feel like the poisionous gas has infected every cell in your body. You stumble and fall to the ground on top of all the other bodies. The vicious people with guns have left but you don't care you are going to die like everyone else. You lie there and wait for death to take you. You have no hope. You try to move, but it gets too hard so you stop. You hear someone yell something and all of a sudden they are pulling you from the pile of dead bodies. They struggle to breathe the life back into you and finally they do. You are alive. You are the only one that survived out of thousands of bodies that lay dead around you. You were saved.
If that happened to you, would you want to tell about it? I sure wouldn't. Just thinking about it would bring back all of the horrifying images and all of the extreme pain. Gemma, Becca's grandmother, was that one person who survived. And all she wanted to do was get out of the horrible night mare and forget it. So she told the story of Briar Rose when ever people asked about her past. It was a way for her to lighten up the truth and forget about the horiffying past.
The book Briar Rose is outstanding because Becca uncovers her grandmothers horrifying story of triumph, many little interesting stories are twisted into the plot, the author writes in excellent detail, and the story is so extravagantly written that the reader will never want to put the book down. Becca kept her promise to her grandmother and found the castle and the prince. The story that Becca found wasn't exactly the story that she was hoping for, but she did uncover the secret of her grandmother's past. The book is exciting and suspensful, but it is also elegant and enchanting. It is a story of brutality and horror, but also redemption and hope.
Becca uncovers her grandmothers horrifying story of triumph when she visits the concentration camp that her grandmother survived. She meets with Josef, a survivor and he tells his story of how he knew her grandmother and how she survived. The story involves a castle and a prince but not exactly the kind that Becca was thinking of. The entire begining of the book describes how determined Becca is to find out about her grandmothers past. "I'm going to solve it. The riddle and the mystery and the enigma. I'm going to find the castle and the prince and reclaim our heritage. These pictures and this ring and all this other stuff will help me. I promised Gemma" (Yolen 32). Becca had made a promise and she kept it. Books are fabulous when the charactures keep their promises and follow through with their statements. This book was also great because it didn't have the ending that I expected. The author threw out a little surprising twist at the end that completely changed the ending. The story that Becca discovered didn't exactly end happiley ever after, but it was an answer, an answer that was the key to unlock her Grandmothers past.
There are many little stories twisted into the plot that also make the book outstanding. For example, Becca got to know one of her coworkers, Stan, a lot better because he helped her find where her grandmother came from. Becca begins to like Stan more and more as the story progresses. By the end of the book she starts too fall in love with him and he feels the same for her. Another story that is twisted into the plot, is the story of how Josef Potocki, the prince who "kissed" Gemma awake, survived the Holocaust. Josef was a prince because his mother remarried into the local Potocki heir. He was a homosexual and he was jewish. When the war broke out he was taken and forced into Sachenhausen (a labor camp) because of being a homosexual and jewish. He eventually escaped and saved Gemma in the field a bit later. These little stories help keep the plot moving and they make the story even more interesting.
The author uses great detail to illistrate extravagent images in the readers mind. This paragraph created mind-blowing images in my head when I read it, "They came to the side of the pit in the deepening dark. It was enormous, full of shadows: shadows of arms, of legs, of heads thrown back, mouths open in silenced screams. Lines of Dante ran through Josef 's mind but, he realized, not even the great Alighieri could touch the horror of what lay at his feet. The smell- a lingering fog of exhaust fumes, the stench of loosened bowels, the sweet-sickly odor of the two- and three-day dead- drenched them" (Yolen 206). Paragraphs like that just give me the chills. The entire book was written in tremendous detail it was as if there were pictures painted on the pages.
This book is so magnificently written that the reader will never want to put it down. There's not a boring page in this entire book. The great detail in the book really helps to intice the reader to keep reading. The story is also really easy to relate to. People can put themselves in the main characters foot steps eaisly because everyone has wondered about their past. This book is very hard to put down because just when you think that you've figured out the ending a new suprise arises and sends the story spinning off into a new direction. The author wrote one marvelous book.
Briar Rose is an outstanding novel. The problem/ conflict of the book is solved and the book has a great ending, even though it is not quite what you might be expecting. Many small stories are twisted into the plot to make the story even more interesting. The author writes the entire book using fantastic detail. The book is written so well that the reader will never want to put it down. The novel intertwines a fairy tale with a real life situation. It creates inspeakable images in your mind. I would consider this book to be one of the best books that I have ever read because of the great writing technique that the writer uses to write the book and the great detail that is also used to write the book.
Would I recomend the book......
I would definatly recomend this book to anyone and everyone who likes reading exciting books. I never wanted to stop reading this book because it just kept getting more and more exciting as the plot thickened. I could relate to the main characters conflict easly because my family never knew my great grandmother and I've always been curious where she use to live. I didn't think that I would like the book a lot at first because I usually don't care for fairy tales, but this book was different. The way the author interweaved the enchanting story of Briar Rose with the horrifying story of how her grandmother survived the Holocaust made the book exceptional.
What did other people think......
"Yolen's story has several surprising turns as the common images of the story of sleeping beauty metamorph into the realities of life under the Nazis" ("Briar Rose").
"Yolen creates a stunning masterpiece, combining the eerie enchantment of "Briar Rose" (also known as "Sleeping Beauty in the Wood") with the terrifying history of the Holocaust" ("Jane Yolen, Briar Rose").
"Briar Rose by Jane Yolen is a heart-wrenching story of Sleeping Beauty intertwined with the horrors of World War II. The novel contains all the elements of the classic Sleeping Beauty: the castle, thorns, princess, and a tale of death and awakening from eternal sleep" ("Briar Rose").
"A powerful retelling of Sleeping Beauty that is heartbreaking and heartwarming." ("Briar Rose Synopses and Reviews")
"Then he came at last to a tower room. It had a tin celing and a tin floor covered with lattice work. In the middle of the room was a four-poster bed, fine damask curtains hanging from each corner. And on the bed lay the most beautiful woman the prince had ever seen," (Yolen 225). The book Briar Rose, by Jane Yolen, is an enchanting story of a young woman's, Becca Berlin, adventure to undercover her family's past. Becca was the youngest of three sisters and they lived in a house with their mother, father, and grandmother. Gemma, their grandmother, was a sweet old women who was a survivor of the Holocaust. Gemma never spoke about her past, instead she told Becca and her two older sisters variations of the story Briar Rose, Sleeping Beauty. Gemma would always place her self in the story as the sleeping princess. Becca loved and understood the story more than both of her sisters. Gemma dies when Becca is twenty three. Gemma's last words to Becca were,"I was the princess in the castle in the sleeping woods. And there came a great dark mist and we all fell asleep. But the prince kissed me awake. Only me. I was the princess! That castle is yours. It is all i have to leave you. You must find it. The castle in the sleeping woods. Promise me. Promise me you will find the castle. Promise me you will find the prince. Pomise me you will find the maker of the spells. I am Briar Rose. I am Briar Rose," (Yolen 16-17). Becca had made this promise and intended on keeping it. The rest of her family thought that she was out of her mind and that Gemma was old and just made up stories. But Becca loved her grandmother and was going to uncover the secrets behind her story of Briar Rose. So she did a lot of research on her Grandmother's past and she finally traced that her grandmother was a survivor of the extermination camp of Kulmof in Poland. Many people told her that that couldn't be possible because no woman had ever escaped Kulmof. She didn't believe any of them and she flew to Poland to visit the remains of the camp. There she met a man who knew her Grandmother. He told her his survival story and her grandmother was a big part of it. She discovered the secrets behind her grandmothers story of Briar Rose. There was a castle and there was a prince, just not the kind of castle she had expected and not the kind of prince she had expected to find either.
A poem of the fairy tale Briar RoseOne outstanding Book.........
Imagine being forced into a van with many other people. You are being yelled at by vicious people with guns. They tell you to listen or you will be shot. Everyone around you is crying and you suddenly begin to feel soft velvety tears roll down you cheek. What is going to happen to you? Where are you being taken? Who would do this to all of these innocent people? Thousands of questions flash through your mind. The air in the van smells funny and you can't tell what it smells like. The van stops. You and everyone else are shoved out of the van. You are naked and ashamed. The people with the guns force you to walk to a field around an abandoned castle. People are dropping all around you. Falling to a harsh and painful death. You try to keep walking and build up enough strength to try to run away, but your body is too weak. You feel like the poisionous gas has infected every cell in your body. You stumble and fall to the ground on top of all the other bodies. The vicious people with guns have left but you don't care you are going to die like everyone else. You lie there and wait for death to take you. You have no hope. You try to move, but it gets too hard so you stop. You hear someone yell something and all of a sudden they are pulling you from the pile of dead bodies. They struggle to breathe the life back into you and finally they do. You are alive. You are the only one that survived out of thousands of bodies that lay dead around you. You were saved.If that happened to you, would you want to tell about it? I sure wouldn't. Just thinking about it would bring back all of the horrifying images and all of the extreme pain. Gemma, Becca's grandmother, was that one person who survived. And all she wanted to do was get out of the horrible night mare and forget it. So she told the story of Briar Rose when ever people asked about her past. It was a way for her to lighten up the truth and forget about the horiffying past.
The book Briar Rose is outstanding because Becca uncovers her grandmothers horrifying story of triumph, many little interesting stories are twisted into the plot, the author writes in excellent detail, and the story is so extravagantly written that the reader will never want to put the book down. Becca kept her promise to her grandmother and found the castle and the prince. The story that Becca found wasn't exactly the story that she was hoping for, but she did uncover the secret of her grandmother's past. The book is exciting and suspensful, but it is also elegant and enchanting. It is a story of brutality and horror, but also redemption and hope.
Becca uncovers her grandmothers horrifying story of triumph when she visits the concentration camp that her grandmother survived. She meets with Josef, a survivor and he tells his story of how he knew her grandmother and how she survived. The story involves a castle and a prince but not exactly the kind that Becca was thinking of. The entire begining of the book describes how determined Becca is to find out about her grandmothers past. "I'm going to solve it. The riddle and the mystery and the enigma. I'm going to find the castle and the prince and reclaim our heritage. These pictures and this ring and all this other stuff will help me. I promised Gemma" (Yolen 32). Becca had made a promise and she kept it. Books are fabulous when the charactures keep their promises and follow through with their statements. This book was also great because it didn't have the ending that I expected. The author threw out a little surprising twist at the end that completely changed the ending. The story that Becca discovered didn't exactly end happiley ever after, but it was an answer, an answer that was the key to unlock her Grandmothers past.
There are many little stories twisted into the plot that also make the book outstanding. For example, Becca got to know one of her coworkers, Stan, a lot better because he helped her find where her grandmother came from. Becca begins to like Stan more and more as the story progresses. By the end of the book she starts too fall in love with him and he feels the same for her. Another story that is twisted into the plot, is the story of how Josef Potocki, the prince who "kissed" Gemma awake, survived the Holocaust. Josef was a prince because his mother remarried into the local Potocki heir. He was a homosexual and he was jewish. When the war broke out he was taken and forced into Sachenhausen (a labor camp) because of being a homosexual and jewish. He eventually escaped and saved Gemma in the field a bit later. These little stories help keep the plot moving and they make the story even more interesting.
The author uses great detail to illistrate extravagent images in the readers mind. This paragraph created mind-blowing images in my head when I read it, "They came to the side of the pit in the deepening dark. It was enormous, full of shadows: shadows of arms, of legs, of heads thrown back, mouths open in silenced screams. Lines of Dante ran through Josef 's mind but, he realized, not even the great Alighieri could touch the horror of what lay at his feet. The smell- a lingering fog of exhaust fumes, the stench of loosened bowels, the sweet-sickly odor of the two- and three-day dead- drenched them" (Yolen 206). Paragraphs like that just give me the chills. The entire book was written in tremendous detail it was as if there were pictures painted on the pages.
This book is so magnificently written that the reader will never want to put it down. There's not a boring page in this entire book. The great detail in the book really helps to intice the reader to keep reading. The story is also really easy to relate to. People can put themselves in the main characters foot steps eaisly because everyone has wondered about their past. This book is very hard to put down because just when you think that you've figured out the ending a new suprise arises and sends the story spinning off into a new direction. The author wrote one marvelous book.
Briar Rose is an outstanding novel. The problem/ conflict of the book is solved and the book has a great ending, even though it is not quite what you might be expecting. Many small stories are twisted into the plot to make the story even more interesting. The author writes the entire book using fantastic detail. The book is written so well that the reader will never want to put it down. The novel intertwines a fairy tale with a real life situation. It creates inspeakable images in your mind. I would consider this book to be one of the best books that I have ever read because of the great writing technique that the writer uses to write the book and the great detail that is also used to write the book.
Would I recomend the book......
I would definatly recomend this book to anyone and everyone who likes reading exciting books. I never wanted to stop reading this book because it just kept getting more and more exciting as the plot thickened. I could relate to the main characters conflict easly because my family never knew my great grandmother and I've always been curious where she use to live. I didn't think that I would like the book a lot at first because I usually don't care for fairy tales, but this book was different. The way the author interweaved the enchanting story of Briar Rose with the horrifying story of how her grandmother survived the Holocaust made the book exceptional.What did other people think......
"Yolen's story has several surprising turns as the common images of the story of sleeping beauty metamorph into the realities of life under the Nazis" ("Briar Rose")."Yolen creates a stunning masterpiece, combining the eerie enchantment of "Briar Rose" (also known as "Sleeping Beauty in the Wood") with the terrifying history of the Holocaust" ("Jane Yolen, Briar Rose").
"Briar Rose by Jane Yolen is a heart-wrenching story of Sleeping Beauty intertwined with the horrors of World War II. The novel contains all the elements of the classic Sleeping Beauty: the castle, thorns, princess, and a tale of death and awakening from eternal sleep" ("Briar Rose").
"A powerful retelling of Sleeping Beauty that is heartbreaking and heartwarming." ("Briar Rose Synopses and Reviews")
Work Cited
Silver, Steven H. “Briar Rose.” Steven Silvers Reviews. SF Site. 5 November 2007. http://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/briar.htmlYolen, Jane. Briar Rose. New York: A Tor Book, 1992.
Clark, Audrey M. "Jane Yolen, Briar Rose." Rambles a Cultural Art Magazine. 5 November 2007.
http://www.rambles.net/yolen_briarrose.html
"Briar Rose Synopses and Reviews" Powels.com. 5 November 2007. http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=62-0765342308-0